1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a high current connector for circuit board interconnection, such as between a mother board and daughter board. It further relates to a bus structure incorporating such a connector for supplying high current to printed circuit boards and distributing it within the boards. It also relates to an interconnected system of two or more printed circuit boards which utilizes such a connector and/or bus structure.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In conventional printed circuit board technology, to bring power to a mother board or to distribute the power throughout a system of bus boards, back planes or the like, multicontact connectors must be used with a portion of their contacts bussed together to provide the current carrying capability. This method has drawbacks in that it is labor intensive as well as operator sensitive, i.e., all bussed connections must be reliable and exact.
Another common interconnect method is hard wiring. This means that discrete wires are permanently soldered to the devices, or that ring lugs are crimped to wires and then attached with a screw to the device. Again, these methods are very labor intensive and operator sensitive. These methods are also expensive in that materials, such as wire bundles, must be redundant to achieve the current capacities required.
Although these techniques have been in use for a number of years for printed circuit board connections, they suffer from a very recognizable drawback of poor field serviceability. The amount of time it takes for a technician to disconnect and reconnect boards, connectors, discrete lugged wires, power supplies, bus bars and the like, has a direct bearing on system operational costs to the user. This, coupled with the high degree of performance sensitivity to poor soldering, improperly torqued lug screws and similar assembly defects points to a need for further development of high current power distribution systems for printed circuit boards.